Recently, I had the chance to meet John Kidder, the Liberal candidate in our riding. We talked only briefly but as I was leaving he said, “Jade, can I ask you a question? Do you vote?”

Happily, I told him that I did.

You can bet that on May 2, I’ll be visiting the polls to cast my vote, and I wholeheartedly encourage all Canadians to do so as well.

Vote because it’s your fundamental right as a citizen to participate in the process of determining who will lead and represent you in the government.

The right to vote is all the more important to me because I have witnessed people struggling to secure it. I have also witnessed their enthusiasm to vote when this right was finally granted.

I grew up in South Africa, where black people were not allowed to vote because of apartheid, a political policy of racial segregation. In 1994, free general elections were held for the first time. My family left the country that year, but I can still remember how the lines of people who had turned up to vote for the first time stretched for blocks on Election Day.

Although at nine I didn’t fully understand the significance of that day, this image has stuck with me. Those people had fought so hard and waited so long for the chance to have a say in government that they wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

Later in our new country of Canada, my own family was unable to vote for nine years until we received our citizenship. I remember how exciting it was to finally be allowed to visit the polls with my parents and mark my X on a ballot, which signified that Canada was my home, and I cared about who was leading the country.

Unfortunately, simple statistics show that more and more Canadians are taking their right to vote for granted. According to Elections Canada, the October 2008 election had the lowest voter turnout with 58.8 per cent since September 1898, a referendum that had a 44.6 per cent turnout.

The numbers fluctuate slightly, but since September 1984, the percentage of people casting their votes has steadily declined.

I’ll be the first to admit that politics and politicians can be really annoying sometimes, and it can be tempting to try to block it all out and ignore them. The fact is, however, that the issues they are endlessly talking about actually do affect us and so we might as well participate in the discussion. After all, so many have fought for the democratic freedoms to participate in that discussion that it would be wrong to cast it aside.

You know where I’ll be May 2 – perhaps I’ll see you there?